KWON O-Yeol

The message presented by Kwon O-yeol until now has always been naturalistic. This includes the Estranged Woods (2010) series, Membrance (2012), Visible/Invisible (2014), and Nevertheless (2015), which attempt to decode and present the literal folds of nature (objects) and the flow of energy involved.
Kwon reads dynamic nature from static nature. Taking sides with the anti-Platonists, who have been opposed to the Platonist idea of photography as mere means of domination or offerings to the subject, he has become a semantic representative (sémantiste représentative). His works nullify Plato’s Idea theory, which underestimated the image, calling it vain and nothing but an illusion. As we can see in his series of messages, in which he rhetorically attaches invisible nature to visible nature, Kwon’s naturalistic depiction has taken a positive stance with regard to relationship-thinking (Beziehungsdenken) between visibility and invisibility.
Thus, his works do not regard just the simple images of visible order or appearance of nature as true icons (vero icones), but are rather an analytical contemplation of reality, that is, a process of “re-organization” and “re-territorialization” of the subjects into images of aesthetic rhetoric through the eye of the mind. For example, the works he intends to represent in Visible/Invisible (2014) are re-organizations of images, that is, “embodiments of pseudo-beings” and “tokens of absence.”
In Seen/Unseen (2006), art historian Martin Kemp claimed, “The photographic image gains a particular authority, which cannot be underrated by any image, even by the most skilled draftsman.” This is because supremacy and authority over images concerning natural phenomena according to creative imagination are given more to photographers than to draftsmen. Kwon’s supremacy over the image in his new representations of the forest and the membrane are a good example.
Like Schopenhauer, who declared, “The world is my representation,” to photographic artist Kwon O-yeol also, the world is a “world as will and representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung).” As we can see in Strange Forest (2010) and Nevertheless (2015), this is the reason he has confessed, “My desires lead me into a deeper forest.”
Kwon demonstrates how objects become skin and how they become doublure; how the photographer owns images of the visible world, and why he tries to represent them charged with messages. He thus re-organizes the phenomena on his territory (photographic paper). These indeed confirm Sontag’s claim that “the visible world has always been interpreted as the way it was documented in the images. (However,) since Plato, many philosophers have endeavored to escape from the (represented) image, not to rely on the image by means of presenting diverse methods to understand the real world.”
In short, Kwon O-yeol as an artist is a code-breaker and cryptanalyst. He is engaged in the encoding of the phenomenon. As far as Kwon is concerned, there is no universal magic solution for the visible world. He has read and interpreted not only natural phenomena, but also the “absent presence” according to his own codes.
Kwon’s cryptology of natural phenomena is the creation of images concerning the literalness of nature. His interpretation and analysis of the particular phenomenon, however, could not be neutral in terms of perspective and value. From the beginning they involved intervention of the will. This is because analysis as an act of art must be a subjective intervention of the senses, and interpretation also must be a fusion of horizons according to pre-understanding or pre-determination. That is why his works are not literal in terms of the “meta images” he has presented concerning the colors and shapes of nature, even as he maintains an “all-over” approach in his photography. It is why they are inevitably an aesthetic and artistic decoding of John Locke’s Second Treatise of objects.

Sampling from critic of 4th solo exhibition (request for master’s degree) , August 2015, written by Lee Kwang-Rae (Professor Emeritus, Kangwon University, Art Philosophy)

 

 

 

KWON O-Yeol
Born in 1968, Gyeonggi, Korea

EDUCATION
2015 M.F.A, Fine Art, Arts, Kookmin University (expected), Seoul, Korea
1994 B.F.A, Industrial Design, College of Arts and Physical Education, Sejong University, Seoul, Korea

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2014 Visible/Invisible, Cyart Space, Seoul, Korea
2010 Estranged Woods, Art Forum New gate, Seoul, Korea
2005 From a traditional Korean-style house to gallery, New gate-East, Seoul, Korea

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2015 Old & New, Korean Cultural Center, Bonifacio Global City, Philippines
2014 Hommage à Whanki Ⅱ-Whanki Museum, Seoul, Korea
2014 AR TOWNS, BEXCO, Busan, Korea
GNAP-Korea 2014, Yeonmisan Nature Art Park, Gongju city, Korea
2013 Complementary win-win, DMC Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Dazzle Art 2013, an international art expo in Beijing , Beijing, China
2013 Pyeong Chang Biennale, Alpensia Convention Centre, Pyeong Chang, Korea
2012 Korkep. the 38th International Art Camp, Lazarea 2012, Rumania
Art in Asia, Baum Art Gallery